Quiltville Mystery 2011 Orca Bay!

I have decided to join Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt which is called Orca Bay. This will be my first quilt along/mystery quilt that I have done. My goal is to get better at piecing and getting my quarter inch perfected. This seems like the perfect challenge for this!

Step #1 was to gather my fabrics and because I suck at choosing coordinating fabrics, I am using the color palette like Bonnie. Black, neutrals/whites, reds and blues. We cut the blacks and neutrals into 1.5" strips and then paired them up, right sides together and used a Companion Angle Ruler to cut out the blocks. I found that the best way to do this was by using STARCH first! My first blocks came out horrible but the ones using the starch are just perfect.



We have to start with 448 1/2 square triangles



which will become 224 hour glass blocks measuring 2.5 inches. So far, I have 40 made!!



I have 184 more blocks to make and hopefully I will have them done before step 2 comes out!

~Lynn~

My not so Square quilt :(

I think that I would win a ribbon for having the most un-square quilt in the world! I am working on a queen size quilt where normally I will only tackle up to a twin. Well, I now know the reason behind making sure your quilt is perfectly square! I loaded it onto the frame but noticed it was not square so I thought that I could float the top and quilt it anyway. WRONG :( Once I got toward the bottom, there was no quilting out the wrinkles.


So, I decided to take the quilt off the frame, remove the bottom borders and try to reattach with less fabric. This too is proving near impossible.

I have been using my Juki to piece with but now have it on the quilting frame. So, I went back to my bernina 440 QE. However, I noticed that my presser feet do not sit straight on the machine. WTH! I know I did not bump it or drop it or do something that would make it this far off. I tried all my feet and they are all crooked. I called my dealer and they said the bad news is that it is not supposed to be this way. The good news is that they can fix it while I wait. DH is going to come with me so maybe I can convince him I need an upgrade??

On a happier note, I LOVE my JUKI!!!!!

I finally finished a quilt for my son! I think I started this one over a year ago and finished all except for the binding. I put it aside and "forgot about it". I took it out again the other day and am ashamed to say it only took about 1 hour to finish!

I am currently working on a pattern that I purchased from Etsy called Buns over Band Box from LittleLouisequilts. I used fabric from Moda brights jelly roll and a basic black. I love the way it is turning out so far and can't wait to get it onto the quilting frame.







I have the two outer borders left to put on and then piece a backing together. This one I started at the end of May and hopefully will have finished by the end of this month.

~Lynn~

Ladybug Pillowcase dress

I finally tried my hand at making a pillowcase dress and I love love love it! Ladybugs are my favorite and were perfect for this little dress. I made it for my friends grand baby Sophia and cannot wait to see her in it. I used a pattern by tinytotpatterns on Etsy. I made it a bit different though and did not use the liner fabric. Instead, I used a bias tape to finish the armholes and I did a french seam throughout to eliminate exposed seams. I will definitely be making more of these dresses!

~Lynn~

MacBook Pro Computer :)

So DH bought me a new MacBook Pro computer. So far, I absolutely love it but am still struggling with how it works. Going from a PC to a Mac is a bit of a learning curve. I cannot figure out how to edit my photos yet so they all come out really huge. I want to download Irfan view but not sure it is compatible. It comes with a program called iphoto but I do not see anywhere in the program where I can edit the size of the pictures. I guess I will have to use the pc for pictures until I can figure it out. The only problem is I find the pc to be so so so slooooooow now. I seriously love the mac!

Monson Massachusetts Tornado

Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks the weather for the day will produce a tornado. But that is exactly what happened here in Massachusetts on June 1st 2011. In fact, it produced at least 4 with 3 deaths.

My day started out great! It was delivery day for my new Juki 2010Q Machine so I patiently waited all day long for the UPS man to arrive. As I sat at my sewing machine, I kept looking out the window for that glimpse of brown. Instead, I was seeing the sky turning black. Finally UPS arrived with my beautiful new machine just before it started to rain really hard. He dropped my machine off and ran out the door. I literally had 5 minutes to take the manual out of the box when DH called me on my cell and all I could hear in the background was hail. He was about 4 miles away from our house at our shop and the hail coming down was golf ball size and we had tornado warnings. Our call was disconnected and I told My youngest DS if I yelled RUN he was to run to the basement ASAP.

We turned the TV on and saw that tornados were touching down all around us. We heard one touched down in Monson which is the next town over from us and the town that my in-laws live in. I had no phone service and no way to contact anyone to find out who was safe and who was not.

We were fortunately spared the devastation that so many are facing today. I cannot believe what my eyes are seeing and just never thought something like this could happen here in our area. My advice to you now is if your news says you have tornado warnings, take them to heart and take cover because Mother Nature is not being very nice lately!

Here are some pictures that I took yesterday.

















~Lynn~

I love a nice of stack stitched fabrics!

I love browsing through blogs and coming across pictures of neatly stacked piles of stitched fabric. I always think, Why don't my piles ever look like those? So, today after I cut my strips into 2.5" strips, I neatly stacked them up so I could take a picture.

Doesn't that look pretty? I will be stitching these into 9 patch units today for a quilt that I am making for my bed, finally!

My Juki is scheduled to arrive from UPS sometime today!! Of course because I am anxiously awaiting his arrival, he will make me the last stop.

~Lynn~